>Apart from flogging excellent t-shirts (and let’s face it – you can never have too many t-shirts, can you?) and being essential reading for anyone’s who’s vaguely interested in what makes the world tick, “The Economist” is the source of some true gems.

Here are 2 from this weeks “Technology Quarterly” supplement.

“Previews” is a browser add-on (You ARE using Firefox, right..?) that lets you – well, preview hyperlinked websites without actually opening them.

Just click on the icon that pops up next to the hyperlink, a window opens up and you can see where you’re being taken to. ( Whence you’re being taken..?)

But my favourite has to be PicLens.

Think iTunes’ “Cover Flow”

Think a full screen 3D wall that displays all the images in a Flickr account. Or Google images. Or Photobucket. Or Picasa Web Albums. Or YouTube.

And being able to search within any of those applications, click on the image (or clip) to preview it (or actually play it) and then go straight to the file.

Think being able to zoom in and out with a mouse scroll and moving left and right by dragging your mouse.

Think immersive viewing.

Phenomenal.